Underwear Angels Do Not Eat Cinnabons

Did you know angels are hot? You do if you were ever a 12-year-old boy
lucky enough to snatch a Victoria's Secret catalog from the mail on a
solitary afternoon before mom and dad came home. But whether these
ladies were your pubescent muse or not, you may be unaware of another
truth about every single Victoria's Secret angel. Did you know that they
are all thin? They are.

"Does it go without saying that no
Victoria’s Secret angels are fat?" The New York Times’s Guy Trebay asks.
Apparently it does not. "A person cannot be expected to attain the
angelic heights on a diet of Tasti D-Lite cone or Cinnabons," he
helpfully explains in an obviously Jezebel-baiting peak behind the
scenes of the lingerie maker's fashion show.

"This is how an
angel earns her wings," Trebay says.

First, she is born, in someplace like Belarus or
Florianópolis... Then the angel grows up pretty. (There are no homely
angels.) Next, the angel is discovered, most likely in a mall. The
angel, at this point, does not realize she is an angel, because the
process of becoming an angel requires time and guidance and support and
miracles and, O.K., occasionally a sleazy boyfriend, as well as a
decision at some point by Steven Meisel, or by some other star-making
fashion photographer to choose a woman from among the thousands who
would gladly sign away their firstborn for a chance to appear in front
of his lens.

The friendly folks in charge of Victoria's Secret
casting examine a model for a couple minutes at a time, sort of like at a
dog show, but with less uncomfortable touching. One auditioning was
Carolyn Winberg, "a tomboyish Swedish model with a board-flat belly and
limited décolletage and well-toned buttocks and blond hair that, like
that of so many successful models, had been frazzled by styling until it
was the texture of wood shavings." The panel was impressed.

There was also Anne Vialitsina, "a model whose career has risen and
fallen over tiny weight gains but whose physique that day was so starkly
fit that it elicited a collective gasp."

Another, "Maryna
Linchuk, a young woman from Belarus who, although she has already been
anointed a Victoria’s Secret angel, was auditioning again this year
because, as Ms. Mitro said, bodies do change."

But Linchuk was
lucky. In seconds she won over the panel,

partly because she is
beautiful in an uncontroversial and generic blond way but also because
she is brisk and efficient and works out five days a week. The model
Angela Lindvall, another occasional angel, at a certain point compared
her particular line of work with that of a boxer. 'You have to make
weight,' she said. Ms. Lindvall herself once shed 20 postpregnancy
pounds to make angel weight by jumping rope and subsisting on nothing
but spinach, chard and kale.